


Finding Your Beauty

by kusuriurikun



Series: Learning curve [2]
Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Learning about yourself, Math and Science Metaphors, Modern Art, Visual Kei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26026705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusuriurikun/pseuds/kusuriurikun
Summary: Art means many different things--as Sho and Kariya discuss--but ultimately it's a thing of the heart.And neither art nor its appreciation are exactly linear functions.
Relationships: Kariya Koki & Minamimoto Sho
Series: Learning curve [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888963
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Finding Your Beauty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JaynisKobb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaynisKobb/gifts).



> This one builds on a creative universe that's originally [JaynisKobb's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaynisKobb/gifts) own, and [AliaMael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliaMael/gifts) added to, and now I'm adding to in what has become an increasingly interesting "idea jam" on this particular 'verse.

It’s morning, and after the rather...uncomfy revelations of the past few weeks on his own inherent nature...Sho is back on his garbage heap, working the bits of detritus he’s scavenged _just_ so.

He’d been persuaded to not build the latest one right in the middle of the Scramble--it was a bit more distant, closer to the Dead God’s Pad now...but still, working on it felt comforting. Right. Soothing.

As he puts an old traffic light in place, he notices that Kariya’s watching him--and at first Sho freezes. The two watch each other, Sho suspicious, Kariya...vaguely curious, then disappointed.

“Yo, didn’t mean to interrupt...was just seein’ how the sculpture was comin’ along…” Kariya smiles, nurses that red-bean lolly of his.

“What of it, you zetta sonofa-digit?”

“Not in the Scramble this time?”

This is enough to make Sho lower his guard just a bit. “Nah. Figured out it was an illegal function...so had to redefine the parameters, recalculate...but…” He hoists up an old sign. Has to do the placement a bit different from the Scramble installation, otherwise it won’t be just _right._

“We’re iterating to a desired solution…”

“So”, Kariya looks up and asks. “Glad to see you’re up to it again...I actually kind of missed it, to be honest.”

 _This..._ Sho, for one of the few times in his life, is literally speechless. _That...that polynomial actually appreciates structure and beauty?_

And just as quickly…”Zetta shucks”, and almost unbidden (as if the weight of years pours out) Sho begins pouring out the details of just what those heaps MEAN.

How he actually does legitimately calculate carefully (heavier objects for load-bearing first, and measuring trigonometry...and also measuring it _geomantically_ by a logic he can only see in his head like the purest of formulas), and how it’s (yes) a symbol of how the world IS garbage, but how man climbs to try to touch the heavens nonetheless…

“Oh, so there is a Tower of Babel narrative, so I was right!” Kariya is practically beaming. “And yeah, I can totally get the whole building a stairway to heaven from the trash of the world narrative…”

Sho is practically weeping. This is only the second time someone’s gotten him and what he does in his entire life, and it’s a beautiful symphony…

“So” Sho sits. Is actually looking considerably less bite-off-your-face feral at the moment, is genuinely trying to wrap his head around the calculus that someone actually gets his art…

“I’m trying to calculate this out. You know how long this function of time’s run as a process...but...you’re the first to grasp the formula. To solve the equation. And...” Sho pauses. 

He gets the odd sense that it might be vaguely rude to call Kariya _rooster man_ after all this.

“I’ll admit…” He blushes. “I’m zetta puzzled.”

Kariya smiles. “Well...ya might say I’ve kinda dabbled with this in another context, so to speak.”

This is enough to get Sho to climb off the heap entirely--he’ll need to scavenge more things for it anyways--and follow the rooster man down the street, chatting.

* * *

In the approximately one kilometer to the AMX, Sho actually learns more about Kariya than he ever knew in the time he was a rising star in the Harriers, and Kariya learns more about Sho than possibly anyone outside of Hanekoma (if even then).

Sho shares more about his art--and how he doesn’t get that people throw away so much, that so little seems to be treasured, and how one of the things that used to drive him zetta bugnuts was when something would be _moved_ in that pile...because people just thought it was a pile. (He recounts a story of when he almost punched a player who had the _audacity_ to toss an empty soda can on his pile as if it were the local metal recycling station.)

Kariya, too, shares stories.

Apparently before he’d passed on (and you never asked _how_ someone passed on--it wasn’t exactly rude, but it just wasn’t _done_ )...well, as Kariya put it, he was part of a throwaway generation in a throwaway economy where if you didn’t toe the line and go through a cram hell to get in a good college and a good salaryman job you were a throwaway kid.

And he didn’t feel like doing that shit, and he got in with an early scene--one which would inspire the likes of Def Märch decades later--of basically kids who were seen as garbage, and they’d revel in being the throwaway generation and reach the fucking stars anyways.

In the AMX, Sho is introduced to bands like Dead End and X Japan and Buck-Tick; it’s the first time in a LONG time that Kariya has had the chance to share this (not since he met Uzuki, really), and Sho finds he actually appreciates the themes. The dark imagery, the anger, the _shocking people the fuck out of their complacency._

And an album or two gets picked up, and they find an alley where Sho starts dumpster diving for new and interesting things for his heap.

And at one point Sho asks Kariya, “So...did...did you want to start a band?”

“I...I did. I tried learning bass, but mostly was in the scene...well...at least till…” Kariya stops.

Sho nods, understanding.

“...but honestly seeing kids like 777 take up this again, it gives me warm fuzzies...like...I thought that the spirit was gone, but the kids are bringing it back...haha, I never thought I’d be the old man, heh.” Kariya smiles.

Sho smiles, but...this time, Kariya can tell, it’s a little more forced. The kind of smile you give when you really are screaming inside, the _polite_ grin.

Then Sho drops the pretence altogether, and sighs, and tries very hard to concentrate on what would go best...maybe that lamp? Maybe the doll someone’s tossed out, missing an arm but obviously well-loved once upon a time?

Kariya looks on worriedly. “Dude...I…I didn’t mean to touch a nerve…”

Sho sighs, still waist-deep in a dumpster he’s crawled in. Sighs. Starts biting on his bracelet. Stops. Sighs again.

Looks at Kariya. 

And for the first time that Kariya has seen, Sho looks utterly lost. Defeated.

Almost ashamed, really.

“...You…” Sho speaks softly. “You’ve done the math, yes?”

“About what?”

“...my function. My...my _set_. I...” Sho honestly does not know how to express this, and he doesn’t know why every fibre of his being is screaming to dig his way through that dumpster. “...You...know...my...time arrow doesn’t go much in the negative. I’m...a different set. A matrix where most are a unitary function. Different variables…” 

Sho is staring at--almost _through_ \--his left hand. 

Kariya knows all too well what he’s trying not to say out loud. 

“It’s okay. I know.” 

Sho’s expression changes almost instantly from loss to abject horror.

“Dude, it’s okay. You’re still you, right?”

Sho sighs. “I zetta don’t know _what_ my vector is…”

Kariya smiles gently. “I don’t know that anyone really does...and maybe our paths are what we make, yanno?”

“What the _factor?_ ”

Kariya leans against a wall. “Yeah, I probably would have been an Officer...except at first I didn’t want a desk job, and then Uzuki showed up, and we vibed together so hard...It’d been a long time since I knew someone like that. I think I’d do anything for her, really.”

“Then again,” Kariya notes, “I also didn’t expect to end up dead when I did, either. I think I hang onto that. I think we all hang onto that. Good god, Megumi definitely did…”

Sho blinks. “Is this why...everything’s so _old_ in the Pad?

“Yeah. There’s a reason everything there looks like it walked out of 1973, Sho...dude’s been here a long, _long_ time…”

Kariya notices almost immediately he’s said the wrong thing, as Sho wraps his arms around himself and starts biting his bracelet again. And Kariya promptly tries to start digging up.

“...Yeah, you’re young...and...you got something the rest of us don’t have, Sho.”

“Taboo?” Sho practically _snarls_ that last one.

“You’re actually... _part_ of the UG in a way the rest of us aren’t.”

Sho blinks. “...the factor?”

Kariya breathes out. “Yeah. The rest of us are kinda...imports. We come in after we die, we have our own baggage. You? You’ve been here since your beginnings. You’re kinda putting yourself together here. Kinda like how you do your sculptures…”

The Harrier thinks he sees a smile coming from the direction of his Officer.

“And I bet you almost have an urge you can’t explain that you _have_ to do the sculptures, yeah?”

This time, Kariya definitely gets a smile. 

“...It’s...yeah. Like a line that runs to infinity.” This isn’t exactly the term Sho wants to use--he really doesn’t have a good language for the screaming urge he has to _create_. “Well...approximately. It’s...not a linear function.”

“People rarely are, Sho. People rarely are. And the same goes for feelings in this world.”

Sho nods. He really doesn’t have anything better to say; his usual axiomatic language is proving itself...insufficient.

And the doll gets pulled out, and eventually gets put in the heap, and the CDs get taken to Sho’s apartment he uses mostly to sleep and to clean up.

And shortly after that, Kariya gets a message from Sanae Hanekoma:

_Thanks for being there for the kid. Glad to see he’s finally making friends. Keep showing him the ropes, would ya?_

_-H_

* * *

The next day, Kariya sees Sho working again on his heap, and invites Sho down for what becomes a new ritual of lunchtime discussion.

The first time, Kariya takes Sho out to Ramen Don, and is actually surprised that the young Reaper hasn’t had ramen--so he introduces him, while discussing some of the goth imagery that he liked with Dead End, and one of the things he and Uzuki bonded on was that band…

And Sho finds he likes tonkatsu, and he’s glad for Kariya that Uzuki makes him happy. 

And he thinks that--even if he is a patchwork with a different point of origin and a different algebra than most--maybe, just maybe, he can still find a desired solution in the end.

It’s just going to take some new axioms and some time to grow the function, that’s all.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this one is a first on a few levels:
> 
> This is the first time I’ve arguably written for a shared-universe (other than one round-robin on LJ close to a decade ago, lol).
> 
> This is...well, technically the second fic I’ve written re Kariya, although the first published. (Next to Sho, Kariya is probably one of my very favourite chars in TWEWY, to be honest. God bless that visual kei slacker rooster man. :D And not just because I have had a fondness for visual kei for years.)
> 
> Honestly Jaynis' concept of Sho (which AliaMael plays wonderfully with in "Factors of Life") is--at least to me--a genuinely fun one to explore. I hope you enjoy this one, Jaynis :3


End file.
